- Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
- Release Date: Sep 6, 2023
- Also On: PC, PlayStation 5
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- Critic score
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Nov 1, 2023It's a big game, but starts way too slowly, and may never get interesting.
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Sep 4, 2023It’s never a great sign when someone recommends a game on the grounds that it gets good after more than a dozen hours, but that’s very much the kind of game Starfield is, and I do recommend it.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield has its moments, for sure. Its satisfying gunplay makes combat exciting, especially when it's integrated into setpieces within its better, more captivating questlines. And although limited in its conception of space exploration, there's a novelty in poking around the galaxy to see star systems up close and personal, and occasionally finding side content worth chasing. However, it struggles to deliver a cohesive and memorable RPG experience amid the seemingly boundless sea of stars. For all its reverence for scientific philosophy, its stories and characters paint a rather tame and sterile vision for what our spacefaring future could look like. When you strip Starfield down to its essentials, it relies on a tried-and-true, but well-tread formula while missing some of the depth of the games that came before it. Starfield is a game more concerned with quantity than quality, and leaves the experience at the surface level.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield isn’t the generation-defining video game that overeager fans might be expecting; it’s a fairly typical, though impressively constructed Bethesda RPG where depth and stability often come at the expense of scope. The surprisingly limited base adventure isn’t so much the draw here, though. The enormous intergalactic playground feels custom-made for modders who want to explore the infinite possibilities of space just as much as Constellation and Bethesda itself.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a massive space-based RPG with a galaxy of content to explore, but it has a surprising lack of ambition.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is a pretty good time. It’s basically Fallout 4 in space with some sci-fi and some procedural generation.
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Oct 9, 2023Some would say that the modding scene will solve the game's most glaring problems, and that may be true. But it's still worth noting how many problems there are, and how lots of them managed to escape Bethesda's attention. We'll hope that game will have extensive content support in the future, as was promised by the dev team.
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Edge MagazineOct 5, 2023In spite of these shortcomings, Starfield exerts a curious gravitational pull: there is a pleasant mindlessness to it that means it can easily become a black hole for your free time. But if it's not a BAD game, it's an achingly unambitious one, failing in what should be one of the foundational aspects of any space exploration game (see Post Script). True, we've come a long way in six decades. But zoom in on the recent history of games - and that of its maker - and you're forced to concede that we've not covered much distance after all. For Bethesda, this isn't so much a giant leap as barely a small step. [Issue#390, p.112]
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Sep 14, 2023Starfield pairs near-impossible breadth with a classic Bethesda aptitude for systemic physics, magnetic sidequests, and weird vignettes. But in sacrificing direct exploration for the sake of sheer scale, there's nothing to bind it together.
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Sep 12, 2023A disappointingly low-tech space exploration game that relies too much on the legacy of Skyrim and Fallout and lacks the innovation and imagination to do its concept justice.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield is far from meeting the expectations it has generated over the years.
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| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Aug 31, 2023People who loved the last Fallout games will love Starfield for sure. This is a great RPG open world game with plenty of things to do and it’s also really good in everything Bethesda usually does right, even if it's disappointing on the things that they tried to innovate like planet exploration and starship handling and combat. [Recommended]
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Aug 31, 2023Bethesda took its formula for RPGs, perfected over the years with the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, and deployed it on a scale grander than I have ever seen. I spent 36 hours playing Starfield on an Xbox Series X and completed more than 100 missions, side activities and other jobs. I feel like I barely scratched the surface of the game...It's one of the best games Bethesda has ever developed and easily one of the best games of the year.
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Sep 28, 2023In Starfield, many might see a time-tested, signature charm. Others might see a time-worn, laborious monotony. These are fair perspectives. A game this large is hard to distill into one set of strengths or one set of weaknesses. As in other Bethesda games before it, you’ll likely have to make your own fun here, but in giving us not just a swath of post-apocalyptic terrain or a fantasy realm but an entire galaxy to explore this time, Starfield makes all the flaws and shortcomings of its patchwork world all the more glaring.
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Aug 31, 2023With Starfield, Bethesda has put all of its efforts into exploring the dark, vast corners of outer space. In the process, it has drained a lot of the humanity I was hoping to find in its wake. In trying to do everything, Starfield obfuscates its most compelling mysteries.
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Aug 31, 2023Starfield aims to be Bethesda Game Studios' magnum opus: it's compelling, entertaining and familiar: it feels like spending time with a longtime friend. This also means that it is inherently old in its structure and in how its universe reacts to the player. It's a shame that it comes with some unforgivable sins, like how dull the planet explorations is, but you will spend tons of hours in the game nonetheless. [Review in Progress]
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Aug 31, 2023Skyrim was basically a once-in-a-lifetime video game—a zeitgeist-capturing single-player RPG that eventually made its way to multiple game systems across multiple generations. It seems unfair to the breadth of this video game to determine (even after more than two dozen hours of play) if Starfield will live up to that. But it’s impossible to deny that there’s something special here. Maybe something that speaks to humanity’s fascination with space travel? Or maybe not. Starfield may or may not be the most important video game ever made, but it is Skyrim in space, and that’s awesome. [30+ hour impressions]
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Aug 31, 2023Put this all together, and you have a game that doesn’t fundamentally change the formula that Bethesda has built its reputation on. Starfield is another huge experience with an almost overwhelming amount of things to do and see, coupled with some great character development, role-playing features, and so-so action. But it also smooths over many of the rough edges that have defined past releases from the studio while introducing a new theme and narrative that match the grand ambitions that Bethesda has always strived for. War never changes — but it’s a lot more thrilling in space.
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Sep 6, 2023Skyrim and Fallout 4 had a space baby and named it Starfield. As with every child, there’s the hope that it will better its parents as it grows into adulthood, and from the time spent with Starfield, I’d say it’s right up there with Bethesda’s best. I’ve certainly enjoyed what I’ve seen so far and the new setting, but there’s just no getting away from the fact that it has its mother’s eyes and its dad’s nose. [Review in Progress]
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Aug 31, 2023Let us cut to the chase: we were over the moon with Starfield. The number of available quests is remarkable, but the writing’s quality is what truly amazed us. Bethesda has delivered a masterful experience here by intelligently guiding us through the multiple narratives as we discover and explore the universe they have created for us. Even after +100 hours, one can still find a way to keep busy whilst feeling the same exhilarating sensations of the adventure’s kickstart. The expected journey is there, and the space adventure is almost limitless. Unfortunately, exploring on our own is not as exciting as we had hoped. In our opinion, the promises of freedom are only half-fulfilled: yes, one can travel and roam the galaxy, and yes, some rich adventures can be experienced, but space and planetary exploration are barely on a par with games like No Man’s Sky or Elite Dangerous. It all depends on what you are expecting for that point, which is definitely there, but sadly lacks depth and possibilities. Starfield encompasses and combines all the studio’s know-how on a highly ambitious game that delivers a stellar experience, but one that needs to be accepted for what it is.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 3,626 out of 6232
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Mixed: 488 out of 6232
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Negative: 2,118 out of 6232
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Sep 7, 2023
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Sep 7, 2023
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Sep 7, 2023